Page 3158 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 12 September 1990
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Mr Humphries: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Berry is clearly fantasising in public about this. Mr Berry knows perfectly well that the previous Government promised $150,000. We have promised, in this financial year, $211,000.
MR SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order, Mr Humphries. Please proceed, Mr Berry.
Mr Jensen: Tedious repetition.
MR BERRY: My word, it is repetition - because the people of Canberra are going to be made aware of the duplicity of this Government opposite. Government members are trying to claim that this is a feather in their cap when, in fact, they held back the delivery of services to the mentally ill.
Have you bothered to measure the damage that holding back those funds has done to people who require those services? No, because the bean counters have not been able to deliver you a set of figures. It is not good enough for you to have those people who are interested in the provision of these services to the community knocking on your door and telling you that better services are required. Labor listened to them. This Government set out to hold back services, and then create a feather in its cap which, of course, never existed - because the Government had only held up funding for the services and then rolled it over into this year's budget.
This Government has been devious all the way along on the provision of these services, and this Minister is in it up to his ears. Mr Humphries said that $600,000 was grossly insufficient, and here we have him saying that with this measure, although he is $310,000 short, he has some claim to fame. Well, it is not a claim to fame because the services that he is going to provide with that piddling amount are going to fall well short of coming into the league of qualifying as first class. Queanbeyan, across the border, provides a service which is many times better than that which is provided in the ACT.
The Government opposite has botched it again. It has held back services. It will continue to hold back and cut back public services to the people of the ACT. It has shown that it will do that in the education and hospitals areas. It has shown it over and over again. What this means to the people of the ACT with mental illness, and for their carers, is a substandard and inadequate service. But the people who are interested in the provision of these services are a wake-up. They are not going to let you get away with this because they know what Labor's promises meant. It is on the record, Mr Humphries, if you care to have a little bit of a look through the information which I am sure you have in your possession. The fact of the matter is that Labor's commitment of $150,000 equated to
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